I don't know if it really mattered more than my parents at that age, but I remember specifically that in 6th grade was when I first felt this intense pressure to fit in, and it just progressed from there.

It's weird to look back and have such a different perspective! I'm so glad those years are way behind me....

I voted teenage years. I had a close connection with my parents for the most part, but my peers definitely replaced my family at some point. When I was younger, I dressed like my mom and listened to the same music as my parents. Around 13, I thought I was getting my own identity, but instead set about conforming to the moral values/dress/music/lingo/etc. of my peers.

I voted elementary years because I believe that's when I wanted to start really being with my peers and when friendships started to matter.

This is an interesting topic for me.

As I reflect on my own childhood, I realized that the attachment and eventual replacement didn't happen overnight, it actually stretched out to many years. Here's some summary.

Starting to have issues at home at early age (~8-9 yrs old). Dad alcoholic, mom depressed. Other adults started to try to fill the roles of parents, but I remember still wanting strongly to attach to mom. That longing remain fairly strong... but repeated disappointments eventually made the displacement. I remember being peer-oriented around 16 yrs old... or later.

That means, what the author described is in line with what I experienced. The initial bond is strong... and despite errors from parents, the child would still desire the attachment... so there's room for error. But if the error is not corrected, overtime the relationship would erode and replaced by peers. I don't know if what I experienced was unique... but I think instinctively, I did gave the relationship many chances to restore itself, until it become unmendable.

Mind you though, I grew up in Asia. Perhaps the peer orientation pressure was not as strong as here? I remember most of my friends have secure home base. It was no longer the case for the next generation kids (we call them the 80's or 90's kids, I'm the 70's). The newer generation children seem to be more peer oriented than the 70's. And the trend con't. I guess the rate of replacement is directly related to your surroundings too. What do you think?

kiamcai

Second world war a factor in starting peer orientation?

I loved your question! It is interesting that the later generations of children have been starting to be less home based than the prior years. In the book, Dr. Gordon Neufeld attributes it to the following.

Chapter 1, page 9:
"Only recently has this counterrevolution against the natural order triumphed in the most industrially advanced countries... Peer orientation is still foreign to indigenous societies and even in many places in the Western world outside the "globalized" urban centers. Throughout human evolution and until about the Second World War, adult orientation was the norm in human development."

Chapter 1, page 12:
"The first warning came as long as four decades ago... in the early 1960s who had sounded an alarm that parents were being replaced by peers as the primary source of cues for behavior and of values... this finding was probably due to the disruption society caused by the Second World War and would go away as soon as things got back to normal."

So it appears that Dr. Gordon Neufeld is suggesting that this started happening after the Second World War (with his research). Why do we think this was the cause?

I read elsewhere that it had something to do with the change in society. There was a need in working hands... so women joined the work force and babies and toddlers were sent to a central place like day care. So the continuity of primary caregiver was lost... John Bowlby observed that during WWII, children who was sent away from their parents were more likely to become delinquint at later age.